Last Word: My Indictment of the CIA in the Murder of JFK

Last Word by Mark Lane: best summary of JFK case

Lane opens with a remembrance to the 50 thousand-plus Americans who died in the Vietnam War, as well as the million or so Vietnamese who died in that conflict. I would like to open this review by stating what I've said elsewhere, that the debunkers who advocate the so-called official conclusions of the Warren Commission et al and deny government responsibility for John Kennedy's murder are actually far worse deniers than it would seem from the nitpicking and hair-splitting they do in arguing that Oswald did it.

A simple reality check should help dispel the notion that the government "just wouldn't" bump off the chief executive like we saw in Dallas. The U.S. government and its large contractors like GE and Westinghouse have manufactured tens of thousands of doomsday thermonuclear bombs, sufficient to exterminate the entire human race many times over, and have pointed those devices of Ultimate Death at the heads of every human being on Earth, ostensibly to frighten all of us into submission should we have any notion to attack or threaten that government. One could argue that the above scenario applies only to nation-states and not individuals, however, an in-depth reading of the terror acts and principles makes it clear that those kinds of lines don't exist now, if they ever did.

Robert Tanenbaum introduces the book with notes about how Mark Lane and other critics of the Warren Report were smeared by the lapdog national press, owned in no small part by the CIA due to their incremental acquisitions over the years. Persons wishing to learn more about the press should check out articles on Project Mockingbird, Frank Wisner's Mighty Wurlitzer, and the history of the Washington Post. My point with this note is that given the intensity and severity of opposition these many JFK researchers have faced from what should have been a free and open press, one can surmise much about the nature and scope of what the press was and is hiding, even 48 years now after the assassination.

BOOK ONE - The Assassination (Chapters 1 to 7):

Lane begins by noting that the CIA has become so powerful that they now command their own Air Force, which adds an undeniable degree of muscle to their aspirations in making national policy. Lane also laments the notion that the press in 1963, acting on behalf of the government, should be able to declare Oswald the lone assassin almost immediately before even the most cursory investigation had begun. Lane goes on to make the point that the main members - the most active members of the Warren Commission - were people who personally befriended Hitler and imprisoned thousands of Americans in concentration camps in the 1940's (John J. McCloy) and who were responsible for numerous assassinations themself (Allen Dulles).

Lane describes his interactions with several eyewitnesses to the events in Dallas, which provides a good alternative to the major media's witness selection. I don't need to list any of those here, but they help illustrate the pattern of obfuscation that took place in the days after the assassination. More pertinent is the section on Liberty Lobby and Willis Carto, whom I know personally from working with him briefly in Orange County California. Carto was sued by E. Howard Hunt of Bay of Pigs fame (1961) and Watergate fame (1972), for stating in his newspaper that Hunt was in Dallas on the day of the assassination. Hunt won the first round, then Mark Lane took on the appeal and won the final round and the case.

The truly extraordinary thing about this case is Marita Lorenz, a CIA employee and girlfriend of Fidel Castro who had Castro's child in Cuba, and subsequently went to work for the CIA. Lorenz stated in a deposition read for the jury at the trial that she accompanied Frank Fiorini (Sturgis), Gerry Patrick Hemming, and the Novo brothers in a car caravan going from Miami to Dallas, arriving the day before the assassination. She stated that they met E. Howard Hunt when they arrived in Dallas, and he was apparently the paymaster for whatever was to take place there. Lorenz learned that she was to be a decoy for the operation, at which point she balked and returned to Miami.

BOOK TWO - The Media Response (Chapters 8 to 13):

In the Media Response chapters Lane names several major media pro-Warren Commission attack dogs, among them Max Holland who wrote for The Nation as a CIA asset, Christopher Andrew who lectures and writes for the CIA, and the New York Times' Anthony Lewis, who by Lane's description would qualify for Junkyard Dog of the Year. Lane goes on to describe CIA memoranda released under the Freedom of Information Act that instruct journalists and other assets on how to attack critics of the Warren Report, including specific language that would be most effective in smearing those critics.

Some of the most painful facts (for the CIA et al) are revealed in these chapters, among which are that the Warren Commission (controlled by the President and Chief Suspect in the assassination) was not representative of the people of the U.S. as was the HSCA, which found that there was indeed a conspiracy in Kennedy's murder. Other painful revelations are the eyewitness testimony of Amos Euins, Helen Markham, and Acquilla Clemons. The latter witness, having testimony not favorable to the Oswald Theory, was denied to even exist by the Commission until Mark Lane proved that she did, at which point the Commission excluded her testimony anyway.

Lane dissects much of Vincent Bugliosi's prose in Bugliosi's JFK book, demonstrating that rather than check his facts to be certain they were true, Bugliosi assembled as much derogatory information (mostly false) as he could find about Lane and other well-known critics and made that information one of the key pillars of his work. To demonstrate the falsity of many of Bugliosi's claims, Lane includes actual Warren Commission testimony of the subjects in question. Lane also describes how Bugliosi interviewed Dr. Cyril Wecht and then completely distorted and twisted his words, to make it appear that Wecht agreed with Bugliosi and the Warren Commission on the direction of the shots that were fired and how those were represented in the President's wounds.

BOOK THREE - The Secret Service (Chapters 14 to 19):

I thought by now I had read everything on the JFK assassination, especially about the rather obvious and visible Secret Service. Be prepared for some surprises. Where the Warren Commission glossed over the Secret Service "failures" the day of the assassination, the HSCA set the record straighter: "No actions were taken by the agent in the right front seat of the Presidential limousine to cover the President..." In fact, the two agents in the President's car and the eight agents in the car immediately behind the President did nothing between the first shot and the final shot more than six seconds later. By contrast, the agents in the Vice-President's car acted immediately on the first shot to protect the Vice-President, jumping on him and covering him completely.

A fascinating tidbit I had been unaware of is that 11 of the most experienced members of the White House Secret Service detail were transferred to other assignments in the 60 days preceding the assassination. There is no explanation for that as far as I know.

One former Secret Service member, Gerald Blaine wrote the book The Kennedy Detail in 2009, endorsing the Warren Report and offering explanations for the behaviors of the various agents the day of the assassination, although Blaine was not in Dallas that day. Errors and omissions abound in Blaine's book, among which are not knowing the nature of Drew Pearson's employment or reputation when they dismissed his newspaper column criticizing the Secret Service on December 1, 1963. Worse is Blaine's assertion that Pearson got it all wrong in his column about the agents' behavior the night before the assassination, when Pearson stated that the agents we